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Magic Leap House of Cards – FSD, Waveguides, and Focus Planes

kguttag.com

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Re: Magic Leap House of Cards – FSD, Waveguides, and Focus Planes

#31

Post by sbarre »

bhouston wrote: post #24
ghusbands wrote: post #16

You're not going to find the technical truth on this blog. Look at the history of posts; the author clearly believes that Magic Leap is fraudulent at its core and wants to prove it. Everything Magic Leap does/says is attacked from that inherently biased position. Any facts or data presented on the blog will be with that goal in mind, and any facts or data that support the opposite will be downplayed or omitted. I don…

A lot of experienced people in the computer graphics industry doubt Magic Leap and their claims -- myself included. It is a fact that what ML started out saying they were going to do is not what they are currently doing. And what they are currently doing is incredibly similar now to the Hololens. > I don't know whether Magic Leap actually will produce anything of merit, but this blog won't help anyone find out. I thi…

Can someone provide a brief summary of that difference as of today?

I thought they were always going to be a Hololens-like AR product?

Re: Magic Leap House of Cards – FSD, Waveguides, and Focus Planes

#32

Post by klibertp »

kguttag wrote: post #30
alakin wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't they just use multiple fibers per display to get around that problem?

The parallel fiber idea is "optically silly" but it takes some understanding of light to prove it is impossible too. It is yet another example of trying to fool people. I did try and explain this before on my blog over a year ago. See http://www.kguttag.com/2016/11/20/magic-leap-separating-magi... . and scroll down to the Appendix at the bottom. Basically you have multiple fibers going in a circle each with their cen…

You shouldn't repost literally the same comment you already posted up thread. If you don't want to rehash the same content in different words, you should just paste a link to the previous comment.

Re: Magic Leap House of Cards – FSD, Waveguides, and Focus Planes

#33

Post by shadowmint »

> But everything I can see as an engineer says that Magic Leap’s display hardware is not going to have very good image quality and it is going to be expensive to make.

So what? What are we supposed to take away from this?

Even if true, its clearly not stopping them, and its not clear if that will or will not make a successful consumer device.

If its rubbish, a few of people will lose a lot of money and we’ll all move on with our lives a bit disappointed, but otherwise not really caring.

The sooner they ship whatever it actually is, the better.

This kind of idle speculation is just gossip.

Re: Magic Leap House of Cards – FSD, Waveguides, and Focus Planes

#34

Post by UncleEntity »

kguttag wrote: post #28
yorwba wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That article doesn't really address the issue of the fiber speed except for "By using a piezoelectric actuator to achieve this scanning, one can maintain scan rates on the order of 10s of kHz" 10 kHz at a framerate of more than 100 Hz gives you less than 100 vibrations per frame. If each vibration covers a single row of pixels, you need at least a dozen fiber displays to produce a high-resolution display. There will…

The GPU of The Brain author seems to be well meaning and nice guy but he don't not understand optics. The parallel fiber idea is "optically silly" but it takes some understanding of light to prove it is impossible too. It is yet another example of trying to fool people. I did try and explain this before on my blog over a year ago. See http://www.kguttag.com/2016/11/20/magic-leap-separating-magi... and scroll down to…

> Basically you have multiple fibers going in a circle each with their center of origin it becomes impossible to get them to act like a single image for use in near eye optic.

Why would they go in a circle when all they need to do is provide a single wavelength on a single axis? A single axis movement seems to be enough, no?

> In the case of near eye optics, there is no way to get the multiple projector image collimated AND seamlessly put together.

Unless they did something completely crazy and invented a method to do this. And maybe with this "invention" they built a demo and showed it to a few folks who were like "hey, this really works, I think I'll write an article about it and get published in Rolling Stone" or "Dude, take my money, please."

Reminds me of another story (definitely true and not about bumblebees). Henry Ford wanted a V8 engine block made out of a single casting and all the engineers said it wasn't possible. So what to do? Turns out throwing a shitton of money at a secret project lead to the answer and the flathead ford V8 engine was the result.

Re: Magic Leap House of Cards – FSD, Waveguides, and Focus Planes

#35

Post by sbarre »

sprafa wrote: post #22
kguttag wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Objective is often in the eye of the beholder. I do express opinion, but I try to back them up with evidence. The Fiber Scanning Display is in a whole different category. This looks like pure lying on Magic Leap's part. In this particular case I have tried to lay out the math that proves that Fiber Scanning Displays are never going to support high resolution. No amount of money or time is going to make Fiber Scanning…

Your articles are mildly helpful. However it's also possible that ML has new insights into this technology or that they have developed new tech whose patent is still under consideration? What if you're right and these particular patents are just FUD designed to mislead competitors and they're going with something else? All of the possibilities could be true. I find it hard to dismiss the personal anecdotes of people…

I would think Occam's razor would prevail here..

Sure, ML might have discovered/invented some new tech or method that disproves all the previous established knowledge, and they are sitting on some revolutionary new product..

But is that more likely than the idea that they thought they could pull off this technological "leap" in theory, and in practice eventually realized they could not?

Re: Magic Leap House of Cards – FSD, Waveguides, and Focus Planes

#36

Post by cryptoz »

sbarre wrote: post #31
bhouston wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of experienced people in the computer graphics industry doubt Magic Leap and their claims -- myself included. It is a fact that what ML started out saying they were going to do is not what they are currently doing. And what they are currently doing is incredibly similar now to the Hololens. > I don't know whether Magic Leap actually will produce anything of merit, but this blog won't help anyone find out. I thi…

Can someone provide a brief summary of that difference as of today? I thought they were always going to be a Hololens-like AR product?

No, they were a product that did not require goggles or glasses or anything. They promised that you could see the effects without any glasses or contacts or anything on your face.

Either they engaged in highly illegal false advertising about their current product or their old product was too magic and futuristic so they cancelled it. Not sure which.

But they pivoted from a non-goggles technology to a googles-technology somewhere along the road.

Re: Magic Leap House of Cards – FSD, Waveguides, and Focus Planes

#37

Post by sbarre »

cryptoz wrote: post #36
sbarre wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can someone provide a brief summary of that difference as of today? I thought they were always going to be a Hololens-like AR product?

No, they were a product that did not require goggles or glasses or anything. They promised that you could see the effects without any glasses or contacts or anything on your face. Either they engaged in highly illegal false advertising about their current product or their old product was too magic and futuristic so they cancelled it. Not sure which. But they pivoted from a non-goggles technology to a googles-technolo…

Oh wow, ok yeah.. I don't remember those claims at all, how would that even have been possible?

The first time I heard of ML was the Wired piece, and I think that one was already referring to glasses.

edit: Like the other comment here says, I just went back and checked a few places (Wikipedia and other articles) and it seems they've always been about glasses..

Re: Magic Leap House of Cards – FSD, Waveguides, and Focus Planes

#38

Post by 1_2__4 »

ghusbands wrote: post #16

You're not going to find the technical truth on this blog. Look at the history of posts; the author clearly believes that Magic Leap is fraudulent at its core and wants to prove it. Everything Magic Leap does/says is attacked from that inherently biased position. Any facts or data presented on the blog will be with that goal in mind, and any facts or data that support the opposite will be downplayed or omitted. I don…

I would argue that at this point unbridled skepticism is reasonable.

Re: Magic Leap House of Cards – FSD, Waveguides, and Focus Planes

#39

Post by AndrewKemendo »

cryptoz wrote: post #36
sbarre wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can someone provide a brief summary of that difference as of today? I thought they were always going to be a Hololens-like AR product?

No, they were a product that did not require goggles or glasses or anything. They promised that you could see the effects without any glasses or contacts or anything on your face. Either they engaged in highly illegal false advertising about their current product or their old product was too magic and futuristic so they cancelled it. Not sure which. But they pivoted from a non-goggles technology to a googles-technolo…

Whoa, hold on there, Magic Leap never promised anything like that.

No official marketing, patent or legal documents or anyone familiar with the space said anything about a form factor that was anything other than glasses ever.

Re: Magic Leap House of Cards – FSD, Waveguides, and Focus Planes

#40

Post by throwawaybbqed »

kguttag wrote: post #14
throwawaybbqed wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mentioned CES prep .. are you presenting or at a booth? Or just packing? :) I went for the first time last year and didn't get to see to much stuff in optics (the big wow for me was seeing Kopin modules). Would love to get your thoughts on what is worth checking out at the show this year.

I'm there as "press" and a consultant. I have been juggling my calendar (I'm almost fully booked from before 9AM past 6PM the first 3 days) and getting back to people I am meeting with. In-between I am studying up (prepping) on the companies I am going to be meeting with. I can't say who I am going to see as a lot of it is private. I will be spending a LOT of time in the Main Convention center South Hall with the AR…

Thank you for the info. I noticed that AR/VR seem to have a bigger presence this year .. very excited for that! I'm an early-career professional scientist (on the SW side) .. I must say, I learned a lot about the capabilities of current hardware by talking to engineers at CES. I'm reading up on LCOS, waveguides, combiners, etc. so I can have meaningful conversations! I am a big believer in wearables (still have my Google Glasses!) ... it would be a dream if we had high quality wearable AR in the market. The main barrier to experimentation is that it is pretty hard to source and integrate the necessary optical systems. I read your older articles on LCOS with combiners. Are there specific modules you'd suggest a "hacker" to try out? (i.e. hobby-level resources as opposed to corporate-level).
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